Speaking of quarterly thinking, the title of my last blog post, it’s been a quarter since I posted anything! Partly this is because I went from a period of non-busyness to a period of extreme busyness at work; partly it is because of a host of nasty personal issues that cropped up at once; partly it’s a lurking depression due to the influence of AI; and partly it’s just been a lack of things to say.
I find the best way to get unstuck in these situations is just to write stuff, even if it’s somewhat random. After all, I’m still convinced nobody is reading this, and anyways, if you are, you aren’t paying for a subscription. So I can write whatever I want.
Way back in February I went to Cisco Live Europe for the first time in several years. Post-COVID travel restrictions are a problem, still, and I was in a weird spot for justifying international travel. I had gone from leader of a big TME team to leader of a small TME team to leader of a smaller product management team to individual contributor. Welcome to the corporate world. Your fate is controlled by your higher-ups, their whims and biases, organizational structures, re-organizational structures, budgets and everything else. Particularly when your leadership is non-technical–as mine was for a while–and you’re technical, they don’t always understand what you do or why you do it, and hence what to do with you. Anyways, in Cisco tradition things have changed for the better, and now I’m in demand, and not much time for blogging.
Back to Cisco Live. What I really love doing at CL is technical breakouts explaining complex concepts in an easy-to-understand way. I’ve sat through enough breakouts myself where I hadn’t a clue what the presenter was talking about, and I take a lot of pleasure in not doing that to audiences. When you do a session you get ratings and feedback from your attendees, and one of my all-time favorites said–I’m not kidding: “I really appreciate Jeff’s non-marketing bullshit-crap approach to presenting.” Unfortunately, this comment means the attendee has sat through one or more sessions which were “marketing bullshit-crap,” which really should never be the case at a trade show for technical people. But again, the corporate world…
Anyways, I was not able to secure a session this time around, so I was just there for customer meetings and to enjoy some fine dining in Amsterdam. Meeting customers is probably my second favorite thing about CL, because I’m a network engineer and enjoy talking to network engineers who say things like “marketing bullshit-crap.” Although I’m not as close to production networks as I once was, I’ve done the nighttime maintenance windows, I’ve picked up P1 cases in TAC, and I’ve patched a few cables in my time. I love people who actually care about their jobs.
Anyways (for the third time), at one point I was hanging out in the “CCIE lounge,” for two reasons. First, they had good coffee, and second, I can meet competent engineers and ask them questions which help me to develop products. It was there that I got to meet my fan club. My fan club consists of two people, which is frankly more than I thought I’d ever have, and more than I ever really wanted. They were happy to see me back at Cisco Live Europe, but disappointed I wasn’t presenting. Ah well, I’ll try for next year! Anyways, they are very nice but perhaps should find a pop musician or sports star to follow, as network engineers are pretty boring.
I did have a session approved, finally, for CL Las Vegas in the summer, but I had to pull out of it. It was for a new feature about to be released at that time, which I product managed from end-to-end. However, my skills were needed on another project, so I decided to hand off project #1 and its session to the people currently handling it. Alas, another CL without speaking. Perhaps I’m washed up? If you like The Simpsons (I don’t), you might remember when Bart becomes famous with the line “I didn’t do it”, until suddenly nobody finds it funny anymore. Krusty the Clown says to him, “you’re just finished that’s all…one day you’re the most important guy who ever lived, next day you’re some Schmo working in a box factory.” Hopefully I’m not quite ready for the box factory, which would be in China anyways, but my two-man fan club may be the peak for me.
I was thinking of writing an article on AI, but everyone is sick of articles on AI. I’m still vacillating between believing the end of human existence is right around the corner and thinking AI is the most overrated technology bubble which is going to burst any minute. Certainly I think it’s going to hit a wall, if for no other reason that the whole idea is based on insane computing power, and there is a limit to how much insane computing power one can build and house. Here’s what concerns me: A recently departed exec gathered us not long ago and said (roughly), “I missed out on the Internet boom the first time, but I’m telling you, this AI thing is big and I’m not missing out this time!” Not “AI is good for humanity” or “AI will make our lives better” or “AI is not a big threat” but, basically, “I don’t give a damn, I just want to get rich.” I’ll excuse the avarice, which may be a cardinal sin in religion, but is a cardinal virtue in corporate America. He was just doing what was expected of him. But as we network engineers start OpenClawing our networks, we need to ask harder questions than he is about whether it’s the right thing to do, and whether the conditioned apathy and incompetence AI promotes will benefit us (or anyone) in the long-term.
OK, a rambling post but at least I wrote something!